


he was a wildfire, you are a match (mine)

by writerdragonfly



Series: matchsticks and campfires [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Mick POV, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 14:20:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5500502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knew fire, breathed fire, lived fire. </p><p>And fire burned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he was a wildfire, you are a match (mine)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syrum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrum/gifts), [pretzel_logic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pretzel_logic/gifts).



> Mick demanded to speak too.
> 
> For Syrum, who should know why. And for pretzel_logic, who asked if Mick fell for Len. ♥

When he was in his early twenties, he spent two weeks camping in Northern California. It was just him, his gear, and the wilderness.

 

He loved the city, always had, but those two weeks were bliss and silence and calm.

 

And they'd ended in fire. Fire, fire, fire.

 

He hadn't started it, but he'd been in its path. He'd been in its path as it ripped through trees and crunchy yellowed grass, watched as it arced and skipped ahead, watched as it swallowed everything in its path like a hungry beast.

  
He knew fire, breathed fire, lived fire.

 

And fire burned.

 

-x-

  
He remembers the wildfire, the way it captured his attention with its blazing heat and crackling flames. The way it kept him enraptured, entrenched in watching as the fire licked the ground and trees and sky with brutal efficiency.

 

He saw it coming, slow and steady but somehow raging and quick and dangerous at the same time.

 

Falling in love with him was a lot like that.

 

-x-

  
At first, he tries to tell himself that it's not a thing. He doesn't... do... things. He's never... done things.

  
Sex is easy. Simple. Sex is never complicated.

 

So it's not a thing.

 

It's just... he misses it. It's not like they ever been more than professional partners and occasional lovers--usually when they were drunk, or on two vaguely memorable occasions, high.

 

He misses whatever thing they weren't.

 

He doesn't like it. Doesn't like how that feels.

 

Doesn’t like that he feels.

 

Sex was always a means to an end. An objective, not the goal.

 

He enjoys it, but there was never anything that really clicked.

 

Until he looked at Len and realized he was looking at a wildfire.

 

Stupid as that was.

 

-x-

 

When he was a kid, he only ever loved one person. Tatiana was his half-sister, a beautiful little girl with dark skin and soft eyes. She'd been eight when she died, and he'd never forgotten how much it hurt to watch as it happened.

 

Seeing Len fall in love with this gangly kid is a lot like that. A different hurt, but wickedly painful all the same.

 

-x-

  
He never had any intention of acting on his feelings, not even once he actually labeled the thing as such.

 

It wasn't that he didn't _want_. Because he did, he _wanted_ so much that it burned, smoldered inside him.

 

No, _want_ was never the issue.

 

He never intended on acting on it because for the first time he had something not worth losing, and no idea what he would do to keep it.

 

Len was cold. He always had been, to his recollection. He didn't care for idiots, craved the stability of well-formed plans, and stuck with what he said.

 

Len was brutally cold, even when he made jokes.

 

Except when it came to Lisa, and those fleeting moments when he broke his pattern due to need and recklessness to take him.

 

He was cold, but he wasn't glacial all the way through. There was a fire in him, and it blazed hot and bright.

 

And no one ever saw it, except for Lisa and his lovers.

 

And now this kid, who Len seemed to open up around far more than he ever had with Mick.

 

He would give anything for Len to get that reaction, except the risk of losing him.

 

-x-

 

Mick knows the exact moment he fell in love with Leonard Snart. The moment everything snapped into place, flared into light.

 

He's always noticed things that others haven't, kept these to himself by necessity and fear. He pays attention, but he was never aware of anyone actually paying attention to him.

 

And then Len told him to learn his gun--how it worked, how to take it apart and rebuild it--like it never occurred to him that he might not be smart enough to figure it out.

 

Just made it a matter of fact, that he could.

 

Mick fell in love--or perhaps more aptly, realized he had--in the moment he realized that Len knew him better than anyone else had ever cared to try.

 

Len was a wildfire, _loving_ Len was a wildfire. No amount of Len’s inherent cold could hide that once Mick knew.

 

-x-

 

Lisa told him once that he was an idiot. That her brother was going to stomp all over his heart because it wouldn't even occur to him that Mick would ever love him.

 

Lisa was right, but that didn't stop him from feeling that way.

 

And well, he’d always been unable to stay away from fire. Even after getting burned.

 

-x-

 

But the thing is, this kid has prospects. Len’s boy--who apparently has absolutely no awareness of what’s around him when he's not working or fighting, because Mick’s been following him for weeks--Len’s boy is young and attractive and employed and smart. He sees plenty of women and men who flirt with him on a daily basis, most of which he doesn't even think the kid notices. The kid has prospects, and yet he's attached himself firmly in Len’s corner. Anchored himself to a criminal when he could probably have anyone. Mick gets it, Mick gets _why_.

 

He just, there's a part of him that wishes the kid took one of those prospects and got the hell away from Len.

 

A selfish part of him.

 

Because he can't deny the heat that shudders between the kid and Len, can't mistake the tension--especially after the first time he sees that the kid is actually the Flash. They burn so brightly together, and they fit. They fit, and Mick knows that he and Len never would have been able to last.

 

Not enough oxygen to keep them aflame.

 

Mick wishes the kid wanted anyone else almost as much as he hopes the kid never stops loving Len.

 

Almost.

 

 _Almost_.

 

-x-

 

The girl is unexpected. He's seen her before, of course. Knows her name even.

 

Iris West.

 

His curiosity is what doesn't stop him from following her inside Len’s apartment.

 

He doesn't know if she's there to threaten Len to stay away, or something else.

 

But he listens. He waits and listens.

 

She reminds him a little of Tatiana. Maybe it's just on the surface, but she does.

 

Tatiana was fearlessly brave too. Up until the moment she died.

 

“Hard, isn't it?” He asks when she steps outside, her face falling from the stern and even mask she’d been portraying inside.

 

"What's hard?" She asks him, and he takes one last toke of his cigarette.

 

"Realizing you're in love with someone who's happy with someone else, even if they don't admit to it.”  He presses his bud against Len’s building and lets it drop to the ground.

  
"... You too?" Her voice is softer then, quieter. An admission more than anything.

 

“He’ll look after him, West,” he tells her and she smiles at him. It wavers, a little, but it's a smile.

 

“I know. Thank you...” She replies, and he watches as she turns away from him.

 

She doesn't look the least bit afraid.

 

“You got someone to look after you?” He asks, and she doesn't hesitate when she turns back around.

 

Her smile is a little sad, “I used to...”

 

Mick doesn't know what to say. Not to that.

 

“You're Mick, right?” She asks suddenly, and then she bites her lip a little. Nervous habit, probably.

 

“Yeah,” he answers, and he knows it comes out a little rougher than he means.

 

But she doesn't seem to care, “Do you... Do you have anyone to look after you tonight?”

 

 _Tonight_. It's an offer. It's an offer and he knows a million reasons not to take it. She probably has a million more not to offer it, not to want him to take it.

 

“I think we both do, don't we?”

 

-x-

 

It should be awkward. There's a million reasons why it should be, except it's not.

 

The longer they spend together, the less she reminds him of Tatiana. The longer they spend together, the less he thinks about Len.

 

By the time they reach his apartment door, they've spoken more to each other than he's spoken to anyone in a long time. Even Len.

 

None of it's truly important. Nothing that matters. Idle talk but _talk_.

 

There's a wild curiosity about her, and he finds that he likes it. Likes her.

 

It makes it easy, then, to let her press him against the back of his apartment door. Makes it easy to _want_ to kiss her back, to taste her.

 

Sex has always been easy, and it's true now. He likes it, and as much as it reminds him of his quick and dirty tumbles with Len, it's also so much different.

 

It's not just the facts of it--that she's certainly a woman, and Len was certainly a man--it's more than that.

 

It's softer. It's not quick, but it's not achingly slow either. She's passionate and the reality of them not really knowing each other doesn't temper it at all.

 

He feels warmer, pressed up against her afterward. Her smile is wicked, and he likes the look in her eyes when she presses her lips against his.

 

She's not Len, and he's not her Barry. But she still sparks something inside him. She's still a match, and he's still totally and irrevocably attracted to fire.

 

-x-

 

[text from Match Girl: You got someone to look after tonight?]


End file.
